


Let us go then, you and I

by vass



Category: Crossroads Series - Nick O'Donohoe
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 12:39:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13054179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vass/pseuds/vass
Summary: When the evening is stretched out across the sky / Like a patient etherized upon a table.Laurie and the Griffin, pre-series.





	Let us go then, you and I

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ryfkah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryfkah/gifts).



> Thank you to my beta, to be named later.

"I knew I should have taken that left turn at Albuquerque," Laurie said to herself aloud, staring around her at what was not so much a rest area as a temporospatial anomaly. Certainly she had never seen flowers like that in West Virginia before now. She hadn't seen a horizon like that in West Virginia before now either. Or trees like that in West Virginia before now. It was beginning to seem plausible that she hadn't seen these things in West Virginia even now.

A deep, clear, cultured voice sounded from behind her, where she was certain no one had been a moment ago. "In the midway of this our mortal life, I found me in a gloomy wood, astray; gone from the path direct."

"Dante," Laurie said automatically, the impulse to jump five feet in the air only slightly less compelling than the impulse to cap a quotation.

"Indeed," the other party replied. Laurie turned slowly, then did a double-take which would not have been out of place in a Hanna-Barbera cartoon. Or a Three Stooges film. Her surprise was pardonable, she felt. It wasn't everyday that one came face to face with a creature out of heraldry.

Laurie would never, later, admit this to him, but her very first thought was: _Aslan?_ Her second, contradicting the first in species though not in literary era: _Gwaihir?_

Her first words, to her private relief, were "How do you do?" It was not in the least how she normally spoke, but something about the stranger seemed to bring it out of her.  
"I am very glad to make your acquaintance," he said, as if there was nothing odd at all about this conversation, this meeting. "How do you do?"  
"A bit confused, I'm afraid," Laurie admitted. "I'm not sure where I am or how I got here."  
"A common complaint," the... large... lion-eagle hybrid... have the courage of your convictions, Laurie! ...the _griffin_ said.

Laurie fell silent again momentarily. I wonder, she thought, if he is also lost. Or maybe if I answer a riddle he'll let me through to my destination... no, that's the Sphinx, not griffins.  
"You were about to tell me about the wrong turn you had made," the griffin said. "Was it a small wrong turn or a large one? The large wrong turns can alter one's destination in strange ways, don't you find?"

He seemed to be watching her closely. What he was watching for, specifically, Laurie didn't know. A little wryly, trying to fill the silence, she replied, "I think the biggest wrong turn was thinking I could teach English."  
"Tell me more," he said, and, a little to her surprise, she did.

She hadn't told the full story to anyone who hadn't known it. Some parts of it she hadn't told at all. "There isn't much to say," Laurie began, and then found herself talking for the next hour.

*

"What led you to choose Western Virginia College of Veterinary Medicine for your studies, Ms Kleinman?" the interviewer asked, some months after that unexpected meeting.  
Laurie, having prepared herself extensively for the interview, had assembled a considerable array of wrong answers to this question:  
a) I never want to be responsible for teenagers again. b) I never want to be in the middle of a bullying/harassment scandal involving teenagers, the teacher I was substituting for, and a cover-up from the school administration, ever again. c) From now on I only want to talk about literature with people who care about literature. d) If I have to herd cats, I'd like it to be actual cats, please. e) A giant half-eagle half-lion told me it was okay to change careers even if Dad always wanted me to become the English professor he never got to be.

"I love animals," she began...

*

Their second unexpected meeting was in her final year of specialization. Sugar Dobbs had called her over, looking unusually serious. "Laurie, I've got a weird case."  
"Weirder than the ostrich?" Sugar had joined the faculty two years before, the same time that Laurie had joined the college's techs. They'd worked together that same year on removing a doorknob from an ostrich's stomach.

"Weirder than the ostrich. He says he knows you."  
"The client?" Laurie said, but in the pit of her stomach she knew. Her mythical encounter, which she'd nearly half convinced herself was a metaphor for her decision to change careers, stretched out under the bright light of the OR.  
"The patient," Sugar said grimly.

He had been tortured. The marks were not fresh, but edematous, purulent. His right foreleg had been shaved, presumably by Sugar, to access the cephalic vein. Laurie was reminded of Aslan again, but this time at the Stone Table. Who told you you could talk to White Witches? Laurie thought, with a jealous anger she knew she had no right to feel.

He was probably only alive now because his attacker had not wanted his death to be swift. Laurie swallowed hard. Well, you could have taught English, she told herself, and focused on the medical details. Heart rate, respiration rate, blood pressure, temperature. First principles. He seemed stabilized, in fact. Had survived the initial hypovolemic shock long before presenting to Sugar (her mind boggled briefly at how — she didn't doubt he could have found his way to West Virginia unobserved, but not half dead! — and she dragged it back to the task at hand) with infection.

Sugar had already given him fluids, antibiotics, pain control. The wounds needed debridement, cleaning, resuturing... no, needed suturing at all, the 're' was clearly not operative.

His huge golden eyes fluttered open.

"Ms Kleinman," he said.  
"I'm here," she said, and dared to touch a talon reassuringly.

They stared at each other in silence for a long moment, and then Sugar coughed from behind Laurie. "Now Ms Kleinman's here, sir, I'd like it if you'd let me remove some of that dead and infected tissue," he said.  
"Ubi pus, ibi evacua," the Griffin replied. "Proceed, Doctor."

"You can scrub in if you like, Laurie, but I don't think I'll need general for this unless our friend here wants to be knocked out."  
"I do not," the Griffin said. "In earlier days on your world, I believe your surgeons made a practice of distracting their patients with conversation. If you haven't anywhere else to be, Ms Kleinman, I would be pleased to hear more about your opinion of the Modernist poets."  
"Of course," Laurie said, although in fact the conversation turned out to be more one-sided than their last, as the Griffin fell silent for long stretches and listened while she recited long memorized passages.

*

He stayed for another day and night. Laurie camped out in the room with him, behind the 'WET PAINT, DO NOT ENTER' sign Sugar had put up on the door. There was time, yes, for the cups (well, a soup bowl for him), the marmalade, the tea. Time for him to tell her his true name. Time for him to explain (to Sugar too, eating dinner with them) the nature of Crossroads, and its vulnerability to well-meaning invaders, the founding myth of the Stepfather God.  
"Then if you found a place to belong here, you would no longer belong there?"  
He looked away from her. Very low, he replied, "Non nobis solum nati sumus ortusque nostri partem patria vindicat, partem amici."  
"Cicero," Laurie said, not amicably at all.  
"De Officiis," the Griffin agreed.

Later that night, after Sugar had left she added, non-sequitorially, "When I met you then, I didn't have a home." But she did, now. She had a useful, happy life at Western Vee. She _did_ belong. She'd started saving for a deposit on a house! She was not desperate enough to throw it away in search of a miracle. Even if...  
"If I'd known you then as I do now," he replied, "I would have asked."  
"To duty," Laurie said, and raised her coffee mug.  
"To duty," the Griffin replied, and raised his soup bowl of tea.

When at last she drove him (crouched on top of the school's van, for God's sake) to the same rest area where they had first met (this time with a map and careful directions) he said, "I'll send word to you if I find a safe way to, if I may."  
"I won't refuse it," Laurie said. Thought: I deeply resent how much less fun being the heroine of a doomed romance is, compared to reading about it at thirteen.

But when she was ready to start house-hunting, she added 'secluded' and 'no nosy neighbors' and 'wide doorways' to her list of criteria, all the same.


End file.
